Roseann Rife says the region has became a testing ground for China’s most oppressive security policies but vilifying certain ethnic groups and drowning out moderate viewpoints will not lead to a peaceful nation

STEP BY STEP, China has been rolling out surveillance technology that is remarkably intrusive, comprehensive and ubiquitous. Eager to exploit gains in technology, Beijing seems little concerned about human rights or privacy violations.

China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, an economic expansion plan that follows the trade routes of the medieval Tang and Yuan dynasties across Eurasia, is overly ambitious because, like all grand strategies, it is aspirational. Yet the future of Eurasia is written into its design.

Erik Prince, the former chief of the controversial private security firm Blackwater, is evidently mulling a run for a US Senate seat. At the same time, he is working with China’s government to provide security services in the restive western region of Xinjiang.

On Oct. 18, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party will meet in its 19th congress and reelect a party leader who, more than any Chinese strongman since Mao Zedong, has attempted to reinvigorate Communist ideology. We in the West ignore Xi Jinping’s pretensions at our peril.

China is gearing up for one of the most important meetings on its political calendar. Next month thousands of delegates from around the country will convene in Beijing for the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The meeting will culminate in the announcement of the new members of the country’s most important decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee

THE Rohingyas of Myanmar are back on the front pages, their desperate plight confirming that the ‘civilised’ world of the 21st century is still a living hell for what the legendary anti-imperialist Frantz Fanon’s called “the wretched of the earth”.